"There never was a good war or a bad peace."-Benjamin Franklin.

The veracity of the officers of the regular Army cannot be affirmed without disputing that of the President himself. In his speech of May 22, Senator Hoar said:

"The Senator from Ohio (Mr. Foraker), whom I do not now see in his seat, asked me day before yesterday whether I did not believe that the reports of the military officers were to be trusted. If he were in his seat I would ask him to put me that question again, and if he should I would put this question to him:

"When Theodore Roosevelt, an officer of volunteers, told his story about the canned beef and the military supplies, and every officer in the Regular Army, who knew the facts, just as he did, contradicted him in the investigation, does he believe that Theodore Roosevelt or the officers of the Regular Army told the truth?”

SHIFTING THE WHITE MAN'S BURDEN.

In his Pittsburg speech of July 4, President Roosevelt exclaimed: "Today the proclamation of peace and amnesty has been promulgated, and at the same time our generals have been notified that the civil government is supreme in the islands." What civil government? Certainly not that of the United States. The very foundation of our government is jury-justice, which is denied to the Filipino people. Our system gives to the people a controlling voice in taxation through their own representatives freely chosen, but that is denied the Filipinos. Under our system, the people, through their representatives, may impeach their administrative officers for high crimes and misdemeanors, but the Filipinos have, for obvious reasons, been denied that power. The civil government which we have set up for them is civil only in name. It is no respect like our own. It is really a military despotism under the absolute control of the Commander-in-Chief of our Army and Navy. The purpose of it was to shift a burden of odium and expense from our own government upon a spurious civil government there-to shift the dirtiest part of the dirty work done there upon such men as Buencamino, Callies and the like. The boastful proclamation is, in fact, but a shifting of the white man's burden upon the shoulders of the brown man. The word "civil" is a misnomer and a subterfuge. The credit due for it is the same as that due to the English for establishing their imperial sway in the Transvaal and in India; the same as that which is due to any African slave-hunting chief for domineering over his helpless captives. The Filipinos really have a government founded on foreign military force, supplemented by a native force of Macabebes and mercenary deserters from the ranks of their own people. The most horrible part of the cheat, however, is that it should have been glorified on the Fourth of July by an official successor of Washington and Jefferson.

THE PHILIPPINE GOVERNMENT ACT.

The act of Congress, entitled "An Act Temporarily to Provide, for the Administration of the Affairs of Civil Government in the Philippine Islands, and for other purposes," approved July 1, 1902, will now be examined, in order to exhibit the truth or falsity of the President's claim.

"War suspends the rules of moral obligations, and what is long suspended is in danger of being totally abrogated."-Edmund Burke, 1777.

FUNDAMENTAL OBJECTIONS TO THE LAW.

The Philippine act violates our Constitution in six particulars. 1. The Treaty, and not the Constitution, is the basis of it. It is held by the Republican Imperialists that the guarantees of the Constitution do not extend to the inhabitants of the Philippines. If this theory be true, it must be because the sovereignty of our government does not extend to them, for a sovereign cannot claim the allegiance of a people, except upon the condition of performing all the obligations which the sovereignty, under the law of its being, assumes. Besides, if all the guarantees of the Constitution are not obligatory on our government when legislating for those islands, none of them are. The oath of the legislator binds him to support, not a part of the Constitution, but the whole of it. The dominant party in Congress, moreover, cuts the ground from under its own legislation respecting the friars and their lands, by its position on this subject. The first amendment cannot so operate with respect to the Philippines, as to justify the 64th section of the Philippine Government Act, unless all the other amendments are likewise operative of their own force. They are all in the same category. And the Roman Catholics of this country, by turning the argument of the Republicans against its authors, in respect to the separation of Church and State, are perfectly logical. How will the authors of the treaty and the Philippine legislation answer the petitions of Archbishop Elder and others?

2. It attempts to abrogate, as to the Philippines, the funda mental principle of the distribution of powers among the legislative, executive, and judicial departments. This principle, while not expressly declared, is implied, in our Constitution, as a thing too plain to require a written expression. The act mixes legislative and executive powers in its grant of authority to the Philippine Commission. But even if Congress had the Constitutional right to delegate its own legislative authority to subordinates, (which it has not), yet it would have no right to consolidate the executive and legislative powers. For the Constitution provides (Art. 1, Sec. 1) as follows:

"ALL legislative power herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and a House of Representatives.” And again (Art. 1, Sec. 8, cl. 18) it confers upon Congress exclusively the power "to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carying into execution the foregoing powers" (meaning those enumerated in section 8) "and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof." Both these grants are exclusive.' While the word "vested" here refers to the grants made to the executive and judicial departments, as well as to the legislative; yet Congress alone shall make laws for carrying any governmental power whatever into execution.

3. This does not allow Congress to share the legislative powers with a Commission appointed by the President as is done by

"The policy of the United States forbids a war of aggression."James Madison, Jan. 4, 1799.

the first section of the act, which by conferring legislative authority upon the commission, assumes for Congress the right to override the barrier that separates its own functions from those of the executive. And in additon to this provision, article 10 of the Amendments expressly provides that "the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the Staes respectively, or to the people." This is a complete assertion of the whole doctrine of delegated powers, including the maxim delegata potestas non potest delegari as the very foundation of the "United States"—of the Government itself—in all its departments and ramifications. It is a declaration that the powers of the United States, as such, are not inherent, but derivative and limited, and therefore not to be delegated. It is an express abnegation of the "jus divinum” and of prerogative, since it rests on the sovereignty of the people alone -on the consent of the governed alone.

4. The act does not secure to the Filipinos the right of impeachment provided for in the first and second articles of the Constitution, as a safeguard for the protection of the people against corrupt and arbitrary conduct on the part of the public officers. A civil government, devoid of the power of impeachment is a farce-a mere imposture. It shows on its face that it is not founded, or supposed to be founded, upon the sovereignty of the people. Democrats deny that Congress has any power under the Constitution to establish such a government in any quarter of the globe, because if it has not the power to do it here, it has no right to do it at all. For in article 6, section 2, of the Constitution, it is provided that "this Constitution" (not the Civil Law, nor the Mosaic Law, not the Koran, nor the Canon Law), but "this Constitution, and the laws which shall be made in pursuance thereof, etc., shall be the supreme law of the land." What is meant by "The land" in this sentence? It is a term of locality. It defines the operation of the Constitution over the territory of the United States universally. It means not a part, but all, of that territory, and includes every place in the United States, or subject to their jurisdiction. But the Philippine act sets up a new law in the place of this Constitution-a law not made in pursuance of it, but incompatible with all its essential principles and provisions, as the law of the Philippines, which, if they belong to the United States at all, constitute necessarily a part of "the land" over which "this Constitution," is by its own terms, universally supreme. This new and unconstitutional measure, moreover, is to govern not only the Filipinos, but it is to govern American citizens everywhere, in their dealings with those people. It is to govern every one of us, in all our public and private relations with them. We, not they, are responsible for it. If it is law at all, it is our law, not theirs; and whether law or not, it is our crime alone.

5. This act abrogates the Bill of Rights which it pretends to establish. It not only sets up an imperial bureau, endowed with legislative authority over a distant country in derogation of the maxims of the sovereignty of the people and representative government, but it sets up also an Inquisitorial system of Jurispru

"While we will repel invasion at every hazard, we shall deplore and deprecate a war for any other cause."-James Madison, Jan. 4, 1799..

dence there, totally at variance with that "process of law" enjoined upon us by the Constitution-a civil law system, indeed, from which the use of torture as a means of extorting confessions to be used as evidence, cannot be separated—a system díametrically opposed to common law principles.

Sergeant Stephen, in his commentaries on the laws of England, (vol. 2, p. 501), brings out this objection forcibly. He says:

"THE METHOD OF PROCEEDING cannot, any more than the substance of the law, be disregarded. The sovereign, it is true, may erect new courts of justice, but they must proceed according to the old established forms of the law. For which reason, it is declared in the Statute of 16, Car. 1, c. 10, upon the dissolution of the court of Star-Chamber, that neither the king nor his privy council have any jurisdiction, power or authority, by English bill, petition, article or libel; (WHICH WERE THE COURSE OF PROCEEDING IN THE STAR-CHAMBER, BORROWED FROM THE CIVIL LAW), or BY ANY OTHER ARBITRARY WAY WHATSOEVER, to examine, draw into question, determine, or dispose of, the lands or goods of any subject of this kingdom; but that the same ought to be tried and determined in the ordinary courts of justice, and by the known course of law." He also declares that trial by jury is the distinguishing characteristic of the English system, and is an essential part of "due process of law."

6. THERE IS ANOTHER feature of the act which is of equal importance. Section 7 creates a religious test by excluding from participating in the election of members of the Philppine Assembly, the "Moros and other non-Christian tribes," and empowers the President of the Philippine Commission to judge who are, and who are not, Christians. This is an assumption by Congress of the right to delegate a power which it does not itself possess, and to decide a religious question. Such an authority, once acquiesced in, and established by precedent, could not fail to be resorted to by the adherents or the tools of some powerful sect or combination of sects in this country. It is the first step towards the exclusion of "non-Christians" from citizenship in America-the first step in our return to Mediaevalism. It raises the question of Christian or non-Christian in the legislation of Congress. There is the real danger. It is impossible for Congress, acting under the Constitution, to determine that question; and, A FORTIORI, it is impossible for Congress to delegate the power of determining it to any appointee of the President.

Minor Objections.

There are minor objections to the act, the chief of which is, that it does not establish a monetary system for the Philippines in conformity with that of the United States. The absence of such a provision is a source of great hardship to the dependent country. The design of this feature of the law is to keep the field open for silver, but it is none the less cruel and oppressive on that account, and must in its necessary effects, operate as injuriously

'Wars vitiate politics, corrupt morals, and pervert even the natural taste and relish of equity and justice."-Edmund Burke, 1777.

to the interests of those islands as the Platt Amendment, without a corresponding reciprocity, must operate upon Cuba. A bad currency system is one of the worst calamities that could befall a people. The question of free silver is only indirectly involved in this case, the real question being one of unequal laws, by which the dependent country is fleeced by the governing country. Next to the failure to provide for trial by jury, this omission is, perhaps, the most injurious feature of the act, though it has not been classed among the six constitutional objections to it. It is an atrocious infraction of the principles of equality and home rule. It is wholly inconsistent, moreover, with the declaration of the last Republican national platform respecting the gold standard, and shows that the Republican party is willing to waive any principle which might interfere with its supreme policy of gain at the expense of others; that, in fact, it has no principle at all, unless it be opportunism.

Other provisions peculiarly objectionable are those relating to municipal bonds for public improvements, which open wide the door for the exploitation of the archipelago.

GOVERNMENT OWNERSHIP OF SLAVES.

The net result of all the negative and positive provisions of this Philippine legislation is that the government of the United States, as a corporation, has become the owner of ten million slaves. This new form of slavery differs from the old form which once existed in this country, only as state socialism differs from individualism. Every citizen of the United States s now a slaveowner, not in severalty, but jointly with all other citizens, just as the holders of stock in a railroad or manufacturing company are joint owners of its capital. In morals, there is no real difference between the two forms of ownership; and those men who fought to abolish chattel slavery are now themselves slave-holders to every moral and legal intent. For Madison defined slaves to be "men who are governed by laws made neither by themselves nor by any authority derived from them." This is precisely the condition of the Filipinos. The relationship of master and slave has been re-established by the Republican party, though in such a way as to give the benefits of the relation only to the favorites of the administration, while the burdens fall, not only upon the actual slaves in the Philippines, but also upon the tax-payers of the United States, who have furnished the money spent in buying, capturing, and subduing those slaves. The system is precisely in harmony with the trust system, which has grown to such dangerous proportions by reason of special advantages accruing to particular corporations from tariff taxation, whereby the whole people are taxed, while the few only are enriched and the multitude impoverished.

In order to evade responsibility for this new slave system, Republicans resort to sophistry. They point triumphantly to the partial disfranchisement of the blacks in some parts of the South,.